Life Lessons

Gundy expects his players to learn life lessons while at OSU.

by Brandon Chatmon
bchatmon@opubco.com
Follow me on Twitter @BChatmon

Mike Gundy believes the college experience is a big part of growing up. Making good decisions and learning to fend for yourself are key parts of the maturation process.

That’s why the Cowboys coach doesn’t see the need to set a daily curfew for his team or prohibit them from leaving Payne County during a game week.

“They have to be responsible for what they do,” Gundy said. “That’s part of growing up. You’re talking about 127 guys, you can’t make all of them stay at home.”

For Gundy, you can’t penalize the entire team for poor decisions made by a select few like the ill-fated trip to Dallas by receiver Justin Blackmon and a couple other Cowboy players last week.

“You could curfew all of them but 98 percent of them don’t deserve to have curfew,” Gundy said. “They shouldn’t have to pay the price if some other knucklehead doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

Gundy, who made it clear Blackmon is not in the “knucklehead” catergory, believes the players who don’t want to do the right thing consistently will prove it by repeatedly making poor decisions, thus proving they aren’t willing to commit to what it takes to be a Cowboy.

“The knucklehead who doesn’t know what he’s doing will weed himself out, he won’t make it,” Gundy said. “We’ve had a bunch of them continue to do the wrong thing and they end up weeding themselves out.”